Helping Families Respond Effectively to Chronic Illness

The importance of the family as a treatment resource in chronic illness is being increasingly recognized. The dramatic rise in health care costs has precipitated a move toward home care and the training of patients and their families to perform treatment previously assigned only to professional staff. Home dialysis is probably the prime example of this, as it involves complicated medical procedures, including access to the patient’s circulatory system with the danger of contamination or machine failure. An emotionally stable home environment has been recognized for many years as an essential prerequisite for successful adaptation to long-term dialysis therapy.1